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<div><h2 class="title">
<a name="winapi"></a>Chapter 1. Boost.WinAPI</h2></div>
<div><p class="copyright">Copyright © 2016-2018 Andrey Semashev</p></div>
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<dt><span class="section"><a href="index.html#winapi.intro">Introduction</a></span></dt>
<dt><span class="section"><a href="winapi/config.html">Configuration</a></span></dt>
<dt><span class="section"><a href="winapi/usage.html">Using Boost.WinAPI</a></span></dt>
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<a name="winapi.intro"></a><a class="link" href="index.html#winapi.intro" title="Introduction">Introduction</a>
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<p>
      The Boost.WinAPI library is an abstraction layer for Windows API intended to
      be used internally by other Boost libraries. Boost.WinAPI is not a public library
      for users of Boost.
    </p>
<p>
      The main advantages of using Boost.WinAPI instead of Windows API directly are:
    </p>
<div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; ">
<li class="listitem">
          Avoid including <code class="computeroutput"><span class="special">&lt;</span><span class="identifier">windows</span><span class="special">.</span><span class="identifier">h</span><span class="special">&gt;</span></code>
          or other Windows SDK headers in public headers of your library. Windows
          SDK headers are known to be dependent on a large number of configuration
          macros that have to be defined by the user. If your library depends on
          a particular API, you may not be able to rely on it being enabled by the
          user. On the other hand, your library cannot enforce particular Windows
          SDK configuration because (a) Windows SDK headers may be included before
          your library headers with a different set of config macros and (b) because
          your desired configuration may be incompatible with that of the user's
          code.
        </li>
<li class="listitem">
          Avoid dealing with lots of macros defined by Windows SDK headers.
        </li>
<li class="listitem">
          More fine grained control of the API you include in your headers.
        </li>
<li class="listitem">
          Allow to select the target Windows version for Boost. This version can
          be different from the version user's code targets.
        </li>
<li class="listitem">
          Better compatibility with different implementations of Windows SDK, like
          MinGW and MinGW-w64.
        </li>
</ul></div>
<p>
      The implementation of Boost.WinAPI consists of a number of declarations of
      functions, types and constants mimicking the real declarations in Windows SDK.
      In some cases simple inline function wrappers are provided. As a result the
      runtime performance impact of Boost.WinAPI should be zero. Boost.WinAPI only
      depends on Boost.Config and Boost.Predef and is compatible with C++03 compilers.
    </p>
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<td align="left"><p><small>Last revised: April 06, 2022 at 21:04:22 GMT</small></p></td>
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